38 years ago today, Idi Amin declared himself President of Uganda. One week previously he had seized power in a bloodless coup while the elected president, Milton Obote, was overseas. Not long thereafter, the blood started to flow freely as Amin’s reign of terror commenced in earnest. When Obote’s supporters attempted to regain control of the country, Amin retaliated by massacring any soldiers in the army who were of Acholi or Lango ethnicity.
Anyone who threatened or irritated Amin soon became the subject of Amin’s bloody revenge, and over the course of his presidency more than 300,000 people are thought to have been slaughtered, including the chief justice, the Anglican archbishop, the governor of the central bank, and some members of Amin’s own cabinet. Amin declared “economic war and expelled all Indian business owners from the country and seized their properties, with disastrous consequences for the Ugandan economy.
In late 1978, a number of Amin’s army mutinied and escaped across the border into Tanzania. Amin ordered the invasion of Tanzania in retaliation, and the Tanzanians counter-attacked, eventually driving the Ugandan army all the way back to Kampala, so that Idi Amin was forced to flee. As often happens after a thoroughly dysfunctional presidency, Uganda went through a number of years of political instability and remains one of the world’s poorest countries.